Orpheus
by It's Unavoidable
Summary: How far would you go to save someone you loved? All the way to Hell? pairings Stendy, Stenny, Dip, mentioned Creek. Warning: Gore, mildly graphic imagery, and lots of gay
1. The 37th Time by Bus

**pairings to be included: initial Stendy, later Stenny. mentions of Creek and one-sided Dip**

**enjoy! :)**

**a/n**

.

I wander up to the bus stop, head tilted back to watch the clouds floating around. It's snowing. In the middle of May.

This _is_ South Park, I guess.

When I reach the bus stop I take my place beside Kyle. He gives me a nod, which I return.

"Hey!" Stan smirks at me. I wave a reply, since Stan can't see my answering grin through the hood. I'm grateful for the parka, really. It hides all kinds of things, like blushes, stolen goods, inconvenient boners, and this one time last summer a demon goddess intent of raping Kyle's dad.

That was a really trippy summer.

"Jew! Gimme a fucking dollar!" Cartman huffs up to the yellow sign of the bus stop, right on time. Kyle promptly goes scarlet. The metaphorical steam curling out of his ears is practically visible in the frigid air.

"Shut the fuck up, fatass! I'm not giving you a fucking penny!" he screams.

"Ay! I'm not fat, Jew!"

I sigh into my hood. Cartman and Kyle, at it again. Stan rolls his eyes at me and I nod slightly, smiling at the silent comunication. Just another normal South Park morning. I look around suspiciously for the catch.

I'm interrupted by the screech of tires as the bus careens around the corner on two wheels. Faces pressed against the windows, older than the first time we had boarded, but the same people. I can hear Tweek screaming the early morning spaz attack. He's in fine form today. The kid would kick ass in opera.

I step forward, anticipating the stop of the bus. I have these mornings down to an art form. I regularly astonish everyone by guessing down to the minute when the bus would turn the corner.

Too late I notice the slick of dark ice at just the right angle between the bus and me to send it skidding in my direction. Typical. Just fucking typical.

I have time to sigh tiredly and spread my arms before the bus hits me at roughly eighty miles an hour. It isn't a rare occurrence to me, being hit by the school bus. And that is just fucked up.

When the indescribable but familiar agony of having my immortal soul torn from my severely broken body passes, I sit up and glanced around. I have a few moments before I'm sent to the dull waiting room of Hell.

"_Oh my god. They killed Kenny."_ I hear Stan sigh. He looks so sad for me. He'd asked me once what it was like to die. I'd smiled and given him some answer probably involving plenty of hot virgins and sex. I wasn't sure if he had believed me or not.

"_Those bastards."_ Kyle finishes the ritual goodbye after one of my deaths. He looks sad to. I smile. My friends are cool.

Cartman's just eating Cheesy Poofs, the fatass bastard.

The world was fading, going pearly white. Before my vision disappears I see Stan go over and grab my parka from where it's sitting in a pile of what had probably once been my body.

That's nice of him. I'm going to need it when I pop back into existence. Probably in the middle of the lunchroom. Naked, if my streak of crappy luck today is going to last and Damien is feeling as pissy as I am.

Hell slams into my senses all at once. One second I am nothing in a sea of nothing, the next I'm sitting on a dirty folding chair in what looks like the waiting room of a health clinic after a war was fought nearby. There are people from one wall of the room to the next.

I get up and saunter over to the counter where an exhausted looking dark angel's sitting, arguing with a man with a head under his arm. Not his own head, his head is still attached to his neck. The dark angel's black wings are gray with dust and scrawny with disuse, his body in the same state of disrepair.

"Hey, Shay." I lean my elbows on the desk and reach into my pocket. Your clothes, or at least an imprint of them, come with you when you died. According to Damien, that's a recent and much welcomed change.

"Kenny! Got anything for me?" the pathetic angel glances around slyly and holds out a hand for what I wave in front of his face. A stale, bite-sized chocolate bar, milk with almonds, from last year's Halloween.

"Can I get through fast? I have places to be." I beg, making puppy eyes. Shay sighs and nods, waving me through the small door behind him and snatching the chocolate bar from me.

Through the doors a long vista of grassy plains, even more boring than the dull waiting room, roll into the distance. Shady people meander around on it, holding small number cards and talking among themselves. Far away above us looms what looks a little like a carnival wheel, glowing like the sun. The Wheel of Reincarnation.

I turn away from it and walk in the other direction. I want to check in with Damien before I'm 'reborn' on Earth.

In the other direction from the giant Wheel is what looks like an even bigger office building. Dull grey, windows reflect the odd non-light in a rainbow that looked very out of place. Out in front there's a statue on a giant pedestal, over two stories high.

It's a plastic grocery bag, expertly wrought in cast iron. Damien and his weird-ass sense of humor.

I amble across the deceptive distance. In Hell distance is subjective; focus on one spot and walk in that direction and you would arrive there in five minutes. Which is something very useful considering that Satan's office's more than five miles off.

I push open the glass doors and enter the sterile white hall beyond. I probably look out of place, being a rather dirty, bloodstained blond boy in a ratty orange parka, but I got over that a while back. Besides, there's no one but the secretary to see me.

"Kenny! How ya doin'?" the large black man behind the desk slaps me a high-five.

"Yo, Chef. You know, the usual." I grin and shrug.

"What got you this time?" Chef asks. I snort.

"Goddamn bus." I snicker. "Hit the ice and then hit me. Can you fuckin' believe it? Of all the interesting ways to die, I go by the goddamn bus."

"Third time this year." Chef observes.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. I gotta talk to Damien. He free?" I roll my eyes. I know exactly how many times I've died by school bus in my lifetime (thirty seven to date), and that's old news.

"He's in his office." Chef waves me off, toward the stainless steel elevator. I saunter away, gesturing behind me with my favorite finger. Chef roars with laughter as the elevator doors close behind me.

The elevator ride's almost exactly like the rest of Hell: boring and sterile. The only difference is the inane background music's even more inane.

I can hear Damien before the doors of the elevator even open. He's berating some poor employee, loudly, shrilly, and at length. As the doors slide open some delicate glass something whizzes past my nose and smashes against the far wall of the elevator.

I sigh. Yeah, it looks like Damien's in a _wonderful_ mood.

"Now get the fuck out of my sight before I kill you _twice_!" Damien shrieks. A pale woman with a knife sticking out of her back scurries into the elevator past me as I slide into the room.

The room isn't so much an office as every kid's dream room. A screen takes up one whole wall, and various game controllers tangle on the floor. Damien's flopped across the back of his plush couch, glaring at the wall like it'd done something personal.

"Damien. What the fuck's wrong now?" I sigh. Damien whirls to glare at me.

"That bitch broke my Gamesphere controller." He growls, gesturing toward a dented but definitely still working controller. I roll my eyes. Yeah, right. That's totally what's wrong with Damien.

"Liar."I say mildly. Damien growls, grabbing one of the rather sharp picture frames next to him and throwing it directly at me. I duck and it breaks against the wall.

"Son of a bitch!" Damien shrieks. He dashes over and rescues the picture from the damaged frame.

"Seriously, Damien. Just talk to me." I roll my eyes when he glances over at me. He flips me the bird but sighs.

"I don't _want_ to talk about it." He mutters rebelliously. I glance at the picture in his hands. A girly boy with long blond hair and a ridiculous hat grins out of it.

"So, it's Pip." I lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. He shrugs it off.

"He got a girlfriend." Damien says after a while. He sounds deflated. I wince.

"Jesus, Damien. I'm sorry." Damien growls, the sound feral. No matter how human Damien seems, he just… isn't.

"Don't worry. That little whore will regret it for the rest of her life, and when she dies she's gonna regret it for the rest of her afterlife." He smiles viciously. I sigh and close my eyes.

"And remind me why making Pip feel miserable for his girlfriend is a good idea." I ask.

"…Um…" Damien stops, considering.

"You should just talk to Pip. You never know." I urge. Damien sets the picture down decisively.

"I can't." he says stiffly.

"Why not?" I ask. Damien stalks away, the tension radiating from him enough to literally waver in the air like little heat waves.

"None of your business." He growls. I snort. The pissy emo bastard. Wouldn't accept help if he were a starving mortal and I offered him a cracker. Not that I would ever waste a cracker on him if I get one.

"I kinda have to get to school now. I'll die later, kay?" I pat him on the back, dodge the hurled picture frame, and start for the elevator.

"Wait, Kenny. How're things with Stan?" Damien's voice stops me. I flinch.

"Fine." I sound strained, even to myself.

"Right." Damien's comment broadcasts enough sarcasm and disbelief to float a boat in.

"Whatever." I step into the elevator and wait for the doors to close.

"We're both stupid in love, huh, Kenny?" Damien's laughing, but the sound is anything but happy. I flash him the finger as the doors slide shut.

.

.

**a/n**

i don't know, should i make the Dip a full out thing? i really like the pairing, but it might seem really out of place :V

**Flames will be used to kill Kenny. you bastard. **


	2. Such a Nice Day

So, i actually have most of this story planned out and there isn't any way i could work Dip in without ruining the flow of the story T.T on the upside, i now want to do a Dip story because that pairing kicks so much ass.

Enjoy!

**a/n**

* * *

The return trip to Earth from Hell hurts just as much as dying, at least for me. My body is pulled out of nothing, the atoms ripped from the surrounding materials. Not a fun process. You know how energy equals mass and all that physics shit? Turns out, the kinetic energy result of fusing my body together is that it hurts like a mother fuck.

At least I'm wearing clothes this time.

"Kenny!"

Wendy's scandalized voice sounds from about knee level. Her voice is so shrill and awful. I honest to god cannot see what Stan sees in her.

I open my eyes and realize that I'm in the lunchroom.

On Wendy Testaburger's table.

Standing in her tray of food.

"Dance!" Stan calls from two tables away. I cock a hip and put a hand to my ear. Kyle joins in the chant and others follow until the lunchroom echoes with the demand for me to dance. From my vantage point on the table I can see that I have everyone's attention.

"Nah, not today." I jump down. Several people boo me.

"Aw, man, Clyde was about to jizz himself there." Kyle snickers. Clyde shrieks a negative.

"Dude." I wrinkle my nose. "Been there, done him, not all that impressed." Clyde flushes even redder and sputters. I steal his pudding.

"Dude, give it back!" Clyde stretches across Craig, who's sitting next to him, trying to reach the pudding I'm rapidly devouring.

Suddenly he jumps backwards, shrieking like a little girl, and rams into Tweek, who shrieks even louder and shriller and falls backwards off the bench. Everyone but Craig stares at him. Craig's going to help Tweek.

They're so gay for each other.

"…Craig poked me." Clyde finally speaks through his florescent blush. No one looks away.

"I wanna know where he poked you to get that fucking shrill." Kyle speaks up. When all Clyde does is splutter, Kyle goes white. Along with his hat and hair, it's a really unattractive Christmas.

"Seriouslah, do nawt answer that." Cartman advises Clyde. He nods vigorously. I hand him the empty pudding cup.

"Sonuvabitch." He mutters in disgust. I ignore him.

Stan had grabbed my shoulder.

"Are you okay?" he asks in an undertone. I smile, mentally beating the breathless feeling of his contact out of myself.

"Fine." I shrug, leaning my elbows on the table. I've finished everything I'd stolen and am still hungry, but whatever. Nothing new.

"Here." Stan hands me his container of carrots sticks. I grimace but take them and start gulping them down. "Wanna hang out this weekend?" he continues, watching my performance with amusement.

"Sure. Usual?" I ask. The usual is heading to the store after school, stocking up on snacks, and spending the rest of the weekend playing videogames until we drop from exhaustion. Usually Cartman tagged along, though no one ever invited him.

"Yep." He smiles. I grin but look down at the almost finished carrot sticks. Direct contact with his smile is a one-way ticket to a hard-on.

* * *

As expected, when I finally haul my lazy ass to Stan's house, the fatass is taking up the whole couch, eating Cheesy Poofs. I roll my eyes at his scowl and drop next to Stan. Absently I check the time.

"You guys gone to the 7-11 yet?" I ask. Cartman gives an angry snort.

"Nah, we waited for you." Kyle pauses the game and sets his controller down.

"Cool." I say, even though I have no money to get anything and wish they had just gone without me so they wouldn't wind up accidently rubbing my poorness in my face.

Although in Cartman's case it'll definitely be on purpose. His perennial nickname for me is Po'boy, after all.

"Let's go." Stan heaves himself upright, and then extends a hand to help me up. I take it, embarrassed by the ease with which he pulls me upright. I weigh exactly diddly over squat, and most of that is skeleton.

I'm suddenly hyperaware that Stan hasn't let go of my hand yet. I hazard a lightning glance at Stan, trying to see his intention in his expression.

He's talking to Kyle. Not looking at me at all.

A little knife of jealousy and hurt stabs through my heart, but I ignore it. I have no right to feel jealous. I should just enjoy the contact.

Despite that, an ache starts in my chest and threads its way through my whole body.

Cartman interrupts my contemplation by pushing between Stan and I.

"Hurry up, fags! Ahm hungry!" he whines. Kyle growls, Stan rolls his eyes, and I tug my parka hood over my blush. I have laugh at myself. I'm acting like a lovesick girl.

I follow them out the door to Stan's car.

* * *

When we pull up to the 7-11 I'm licking blood off my lips before it drips down my chin and stains my jeans. These are my good pair, the ones that make my ass look damn fine.

On second thought, telling Cartman that his jacket made his man boobs less obvious hadn't been the best idea. But it made Stan laugh.

"Hurry, Po'boy." Cartman pushes me out the door of the car and onto the asphalt, stepping over me to get out. I scramble to my feet, a dark scowl on my face, but Kyle grabs my shoulder.

"Allow me." He smirks. I shrug and Kyle sneaks up behind Cartman. Looking back at me, he raises his eyebrows.

I give a thumbs up.

Kyle grabs Cartman's hair and yanks viciously backwards, at the same time planting his foot behind his knee.

Cartman topples over in what seems to be delicious slow motion, squealing like a pig and flailing at the air uselessly. Kyle dances nimbly out of the way of his grasping hands, pointing and laughing.

I bend double, crying painful tears of joy.

"That-," I choke out, "was fucking… perfect. Tell me… someone was… recording that."

"Gotcha covered." Stan sniggers, handing me his phone. I cradle it delicately, watching the short clip of video. It's solid gold.

"KAHL! You fucking _kike!_" Cartman roars, lumbering to his feet, face red and sweaty. He looks like he just shit a brick.

"You fucking _deserved_ it. And don't call me that, fatass!" Kyle scowls, slinging an arm protectively over my shoulder. I frown. I'm not a fucking chick.

"Oh Kyle, thanks for defending me." I croon in his ear, trying to sound like a girl. Kyle snickers and pushes me back, into Stan. I'm laughing again.

I catch sight of Stan's face. He's looking confusedly between us.

"Come on." He says at last. I decide I feel so good, I want to push my luck.

"Oh, I will. I'll even scream your name, baby." I purr, running a hand through his hair. He freezes, staring at me in fascinated horror, cheeks so red you could get a tan from them.

"Kenneh, you FAG." Cartman lumbers after me, probably guessing it was me that told Kyle to trip him.

I laugh and dart away, feeling like the whole world is perfect.

* * *

Slowly I browse through the candy shelves, wondering if it's worth the risk to palm a few pieces. I'm not that hungry, though, and the store clerk is watching me suspiciously. Probably not a good idea to risk it.

"Hey." I look up and see Stan standing next to me. He's still blushing a little bit. I grin and look back at the Snickers in my hand. I regretfully put it back and turn away.

"You want it?" Stan asks. I look back and see him wiggling the candy at me. My mouth waters but I bite down on it.

"Nah, I'm fine." I smile and shrug. He narrows his eyes at me.

"I'll pay for it." He says. I wince. That's what I was afraid of. I don't want my friends to think I need them to pay for everything. _Poor little Kenny, he's so sad, got no money, we have to pay for him. Maybe we could even start a damn charity!_

"I said I was fine!" I snap at him. Maybe being angry will distract him.

"Kenny, just take the damn candy!" Stan snaps back, trying to hand me the Snickers. I push it back at him. I'm not going to lower myself that far, to being a charity case for him. I'll be damned if I'm going to lose my pride over this.

Cartman bellows a particularly racist insult at Kyle and the store clerk sends us a very irritated look. I give it five minutes tops before she throws us out.

"Please? Just take it." Stan recaptures my attention. He knows I'm never able to deny him when he uses that tone. He thinks it's because I'm a sucker for guilt trips, and I'm not about to inform him that when he begged like that I get turned on like _whoa_.

"Fine." I huff. "But I swear Stan, I don't need handouts!"

At that precise second a gunshot rings out in the store.

I, with intuition tuned by thousands of situations like this, grab Stan and drop, pulling him to the floor with me. Kyle, at the other end of the aisle, has also done so. Except he hadn't grabbed Cartman. Unfortunately, the fatass has enough sense to drop as well.

The sound of bullet casings tinkling onto the floor echoes in the silence. I look back and see that the cashier girl is staring at something by the door with wide, terrified eyes.

I inch up to the aisle and look around the corner.

A man stands near the door, fumbling with his gun. His clothes are ragged and dirty and he's shaking, eyes darting to the corners of the store with frantic paranoia.

I get another look at his gun and almost have to laugh. Honestly.

I climb to my feet. The man, who's obviously on _something_, snaps to look at me.

I hear the clerk screaming. Cartman's cursing and Kyle's gesturing at me wildly to get down. I don't. It's a double barrel shotgun, a maximum of two shots before he has to reload. He'll waste them on me.

"You people _disgust_ me." I tell him, narrowing my eyes. The robber actually takes a step back in surprise.

"Uh…" he says, bloodshot eyes blinking warily.

"I'm willing to bet you aren't as poor as me. But you don't see _me_ trying to hold up a 7-11, do ya?" I take a step forward, trying to appear as threatening as possible.

"Shut up!" the man fumbles with the shotgun and points it at me. "Get down."

"No." I stand firm, maintaining my glare. "You listen to me. I am _sick_ of you people ruining my day."

The man's hand is shaking, but not from nerves. From whatever he's taken, probably.

"Get down or I swear to God-!" he screams.

"You going to shoot me? Try it. I dare you." I interrupt him coolly.

I see his finger tightening in slow-motion. I shut my eyes instinctually, body trying to block out the sight of my death.

Something impacts me from the side.

I hear the shotgun roar.

_It was such a nice day. _

_

* * *

_

_**a/n**_

is the cliffhanger as obvious as i think it is? i wanted to make it something cool but i feel like i just phailed. i promise next chapter won't suck this bad D:

on an absolutely unrelated note, does anyone know any good Stenny? i can't find good stuff anywhere. this pairing needs more love

**I will use any flames to roast marshmellows.**


	3. Stuck With the Jew

Yeah, super cliche cliffhanger. i know. T.T forgive meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Enjoy!

**a/n**

* * *

My head hurts like a son of a bitch. Everything is swimming in and out of focus. I can hear things, but they're distant and impossible to focus on. I try to figure out how to open my eyes.

When they finally open I spy blurry but violent movement. There's a streak of red moving around, and I try to focus on that, but I can't and it's making me nauseous so I give up.

I close my eyes for a moment and try to figure out what's happening. My thoughts are fuzzy, incoherent. Little bits of memory and daydreams and stray thoughts float around. I can't figure out what's real and what's just my body's fucked up way of protecting my brain.

I open my eyes again. I can see better, enough to tell the streak of red is Kyle. Cartman's dragging him away from the twitching body of… something. I try to move and discover there's an arm thrown over my waist.

I pull myself up a little. I want to see who's holding me.

Stan. Huh. Wait, why is there red_ohGOD __**NO**__!_

Everything jumps into clarity.

Kyle's screaming in the background, Cartman barely holding him back from further assaulting the robber. I look down at Stan. I know human anatomy. I know it forcefully and painfully.

The two bullet holes went right through where his heart and lungs are.

He's dead.

I'm on my feet, out the door, gone before Kyle or Cartman realize I'm going.

I run and run, sobbing Stan's name with every step. I fall twice, headlong into the pavement. Fervently I pray I'll die, but I don't. I never do when I want to. I'm shedding disgusting drops of snot and tears, sweat and blood.

I keep running, even when my lungs start to burn. The grief won't let me stop.

Finally my body just gives up and I skid into the ground. My legs won't move. They burn worse than fire. My lungs heave for air and even then I feel like I'm suffocating. Body panicking due to lack of oxygen and incoherent with grief, I curl up in a fetal position and sob my anguish into the dirt.

"He can't." I sob out. No one's listening. I've run past the edge of town, into the woods. I pray the big bad wolf comes to eat me up.

"He can't be dead, he can't be, he can't be, _HECAN'TBEDEAD_!" I scream at the sky.

He can't be dead.

* * *

_I won't let him be. _

It's a thought that finally soaks slowly through every layer of my consciousness, piercing through the grief I feel like I'm drowning in. My whole body, heart, and soul rejects the fact that he's dead.

Therefore, I will not let him be dead.

And my teachers always thought I couldn't reason.

I get to my feet slowly, blinking away tears and dirt and blood from where I cut myself in a fall. I can't feel anything. I think I'm going into shock, but that's fine. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters but the plan I can feel unwinding in my head like a spool of thread, leading me through this twisted maze to where Stan is.

* * *

"I need you to kill me." I rush out as soon as Cartman comes to the door. He stares at me incredulously for what feels like hours. I tap an impatient foot.

"No, Kenneh." Cartman says flatly, turning away and moving to close the door.

"Why not?" I snarl. Cartman looks back over his shoulder.

"Because, you might nawt come back." He huffs as if this is self-evident. I blink.

"You… care?" This possible revelation distracts me.

"If Ah lose you, Ah'm stuck with the Jew." Cartman looks away, however, and I grin.

"You _do_ care." He growls menacingly at me.

"Fuck you, Po'boy." Cartman actually looks scared for a fraction of a second. "The onleh thing Ah care about is being left with Kahl's fucking Jew germs."

His words, intended to distract me, remind me what I came to do.

"But Cartman." I use my most persuasive voice. "I could bring Stan back."

"But would you come back too?" he counters. I scowl.

"Wouldn't you rather have Stan?" I keep trying my persuasive voice.

Cartman just shakes his head grimly.

"Ah hate that hippeh pusseh more than you, hoodrat." He lifts his hands to show the value of the 'hippeh pusseh' and the hoodrat. The hoodrat appears to be slightly higher.

I feel vaguely gratified, in a sick, twisted way. But that isn't important.

"Great." I turn away and make to walk out into the snow. Cartman isn't working out. Time for my next plan.

Cartman grabs my arm and I panic for a moment, knowing if he tried to drag me somewhere and stop me from doing this I wouldn't have the strength to stop him.

"…You're really determined to do this." It isn't a question so I just glare at him.

"Fine." He looks pained. "There's a gun in the garage."

I feel myself grin, suddenly so much closer to Stan than I was. The knowledge lights me up and gives me something close enough to happiness it made no difference that it isn't.

However, my expression gives Cartman pause. He examines more for a long moment before letting me go, expression unusually sharp.

"I have to wonder why you're so _intent_ on saving Stan." He mutters. His words warn me that he's dangerously close to knowing why I'm doing this.

I don't care. If things turn out the way I expect them to, it won't matter. If they don't, it still won't matter. But they will work out. I'll _make_ them.

* * *

I reach Kyle's house pulling a shotgun along with me that weighs far more than I like. It's a mark of how fucked up this town is that no one stops me to ask what the hell I'm doing with a gun. It's not like anyone cares, anyway. I die all the time, what's one time more or less?

I lean the gun against the side of the house, out of sight, and ring the doorbell.

Mrs. Broflovski answers, eyes red and watery. I'm not sure what expression I have on my face. Hopefully one sad enough to keep Mrs. Broflovski from chewing me out.

Luckily my expression passes muster.

"I'm so sorry, Kenny." She murmurs. Her voice is artistically hoarse.

Her pretend sorrow enrages me to the point that I know I'm irrational. I just want to punch the fat bitch in the face. She knows nothing, _nothing_about real grief. Kyle knows it. I know it. Hell, maybe even Cartman knows it.

But she doesn't. And she has no right to pretend she does.

"Can I talk to Kyle?" I ask in a subdued voice. Mrs. Broflovski nods and holds the door wider for me to slip past. I go up the stairs to his room and knock on the door.

It's an excruciating minute before the door creaks open. His eyes are bloodshot, his cheeks wet. He's obviously as deep in shock and mourning as I should be.

"Kenny?" he asks, looking at me in confusion. I grab his wrist, cover his mouth and yank him to the railing of the stairs. Peering over the edge, I see Mrs. Broflovski praying with Ike in the living room.

Despite his struggles I pull him down the stairs, sneaking out into the snow. He sees the shotgun and his eyes widen. He probably expects me to shoot him or some shit. I probably look like I'm that crazy.

"I need you to shoot me." I tell him grimly, thrusting the gun into Kyle's hands and dragging him further out into the snow. Kyle gapes at me.

"What… What the fuck is wrong with you? You want me to shoot you, after Stan-… S-Stan…" he can't even finish the thought.

"I'm going to try to get him back, okay? But I need you to shoot me. Fatass won't do it." I snarl, shaking him by the shoulders. He gasps as his head is jerked back and forth.

"Why don't you fucking shoot yourself, bastard!" he's sobbing now, shoving at me feebly.

My sanity, any of it that's left, snaps with a delicate tinkling sound.

"Because I fucking can't!" I shriek in his face. "It never fucking works! I've tried, I always miss or something, now just fucking shoot me, we don't have time for this shit!"

"You've… tried?" Kyle breathes, stunned finally into stillness by my slip. I curse but there're bigger problems and Kyle's wasting time, wasting precious, precious time.

"Goddamnit Kyle! I'll come back but Stan! Fucking! Won't!" I punctuate each word with a shake. How hard is it to understand?

"Fine." Kyle whispers. His eyes are glassy with shock. "Fine. I'll do it."

"Fucking_ finally_." I mutter, stalking a little further away from the house. No inconvenient bloodstains, thanks. I'm so nice, I deserve sainthood.

Kyle is shaking so bad I wonder if maybe my curse won't be enough to insure my death. Then I discount it. If I have to get a kitchen knife and take it to vein to bleed myself dry, I am going to die.

"S-sorry." Kyle mutters. I shut my eyes. The gun goes off. My chest explodes.

* * *

**a/n**

any guesses as to what Kenny's plan is? hint: he actually isn't just rushing off with no idea what to do. he's stupid, not stupid (Wait...)

**flames will be used to make a lovely campfire**


	4. Only Mormons Rate Heaven

so.

my laptop broke. and it had everything on it except this chapter. luckily, the people say they can get all the docs and stuff off it, so hey! not a total loss, right? :D

anyway.

Enjoy!

**a/n**

* * *

I slam into the waiting room of Hell with a vengeance, the arrival of all of my rage and grief manifesting for a moment as a loud _crack_ of displaced air. The whole room goes silent at my ferocious scowl.

I dash over to the door. I have to get to Stan before he starts forgetting things, big things, like Kyle or his mother. Or me.

Shay tries to say something, but I'm out the door before he can stop me.

The vistas of the park are very grey. The older the spirits get the grayer they are, the memories that lend them color leaching away. The newest spirits even retain traces of warmth.

Yards away a boy in a blue hat sits in a fetal position, back to me. I run over and grab his shoulder. He looks up. He's blond.

"Fuck!" I shout, throwing him away from me with probably unnecessary venom. The boy scrambles away, terrified, as I spin in a circle, looking for another blue-hatted figure.

"Kenny…?" the voice is hesitant. I whirl.

Stan stares at me. He's fading already, the colors nowhere near as vibrant as the spirits streaming past me, out of the waiting room.

"Stan!" I think I teleport, I reach him so fast. He jumps when I hug him, but hesitantly returns my enthusiasm. The contact is Salvation, healing the parts of me that have been steadily snapping to splinters ever since he died. He isn't warm, has faded to the coolness of forgotten spirits, but he still smells like Stan, still looks like him.

"Kenny, where am I? I can't remember how I got here." Stan pulls away and looks around, eyes darting anxiously. I wince. Recent memories go first.

"This… this is Hell. You're dead." I try to sound comforting.

"What? No! I can't be!" Stan flushes, panic brightening his colors. The sound of his fear breaks some of me again.

"You… I'm sorry. It's all my fault." I look away, suddenly ashamed to be here.

Stan's punch takes me off guard. I fall backwards and slam into the ground ass-first, holding the shoulder he hit gingerly.

"Tell me what happened. Without angsting." He's breathing hard, panic evident but controlled in his eyes. I get slowly to my feet and draw in a shuddering breath. Instinctively I reach for my hood, then force my hands down. I need to be understandable, because I really doubt I can tell this story twice.

"We were going out to the 7-11. For snacks you know, all four of us." I start. It takes a while for me to get through the whole story, because I have to stop every few minutes to wipe my eyes. Stan covers his mouth with a hand the whole time, keeping wide eyes on me.

"You ok?" I ask. Stan draws in a shuddering breath and looks at me.

"I'm kinda pissed I didn't rate heaven." He smiles weakly at his feeble attempt at humor.

"Only kids and Mormons go to heaven." I laugh more from relief than anything else.

"Oh. I don't want to go anymore." He wrinkles his nose and shrugs. "Fuckin' brats running around under my feet and fuckin' creepy Mormon smiles."

I laugh for real this time.

"You remember any?" I ask hesitantly. Stan winces.

"Some." He rubs his chest instinctively. I bite my lip and look away.

"Let's go." I pull him in the direction of Damien's office building. "I need to talk to Damien."

We talk quietly as we walk about little things, I trying to plug all the multiplying holes in Stan's memory. He avoids talking about recent things, and even though it's probably a bad idea I do too.

But I guess I must be a cat, cause the curiosity is killing me.

"Why did you do it?" I ask when I can't stand it anymore, voice quiet. Stan doesn't need to ask what I mean. He hesitates for a long time.

"I... didn't want you to die anymore." He whispers. He looks torn. "You just, you get this _expression_ every time you know you're about to die. Like, I don't know. Like you just can't be surprised anymore. And you always close your eyes."

I digest this for a moment. I didn't know he thought that much about me. I'm used to being the background pervert that dies all the time. That's the role I fit best. No one is supposed to notice me.

"Still. Why?" I ask, desperately needing answers. I don't understand why someone would care when I die. I always came back. I never complained about it.

"I guess I didn't want you to hurt." He looks away. "We're almost there.

I look up and Damien's home is indeed looming over us.

"Right." I pushed the door open and urged Stan in after me. We walk together toward the end of the atrium. Chef's hard at work over his computer until I clear my throat. He looks up.

Chef opens his mouth with a smile, no doubt full of some joke he wants to tell.

And then his eyes slide past me to Stan. His smile sags, his face pales, and the sadness there assures me that what I am doing is the only solution. If this is Chef is like, after seeing Stan dead, how will everyone else be? Especially Kyle, and Wendy.

"Oh, children." He murmurs sadly. I nod and drag Stan past. Stan is staring at Chef in shock.

"He's here?" Stan asks me.

"Yeah." I pull him into the elevator and press the devil's head button that marked Damien's floor. Stan takes one look and snorts so hard I suspect it hurt.

"Drama queen?" he asks me in an undertone. I nod.

We stand in silence. I'm trying to think of a way to distract Stan from my plan but I'm coming up blank. I'll just have to be fast, then.

The elevator dings and the door opens to show Damien glaring at both of us. I glare back for a moment before I turn to Stan.

"I gotta talk to Damien, Stan. Wait here for me?" I smile winningly and he drops tiredly onto the couch.

"Fine." He pulls his hat off and starts turning it over in his hands. I shrug, grab Damien, and pull him out the door into the hall.

"I need you to take out my immortality and give it to Stan." I tell him as soon as we're far enough down the hall that I'm sure Stan won't overhear us.

Damien gapes at me for a moment before snapping his mouth closed.

"And what if I can't?" he asks.

"You told me you could once." I plead. Damien winces.

"Obviously not one of my brighter moments." He mutters. "What if I can't give it to Stan?"

"Can you?" I counter. Annoyed, Damien snarls.

"Yes, but-," he starts to say.

"Well, then." I interrupt. He scowls.

"But. You'll. Die." He emphasizes each word like I'm an idiot. "Permanently."

I scowl. I know exactly what the consequences are. And Damien knows I know. He's just stalling.

"I don't care." I sigh. "As long as he's saved."

"Is he worth it?" Damien sounds despairing. I shake my head. He needs to understand why this is so important.

"Wouldn't you do the same thing if it were you and Pip?" I ask quietly. He looks away.

"I wouldn't have to, because I live here and-," he starts to obfuscate. I interrupt him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Damien." I say. He stops with his eyes on his feet.

"I don't want to." He sounds so much like a bratty kid I'm almost amused.

"Please, Damien." I beg him unashamedly. He looks up at last, skin pale and eyes opaque.

"It's going to hurt." Damien's face is hard. I nod. I was expecting that.

"How much?" I ask.

"How determined are you to do this?" Damien asks instead. I swallow my fear.

"That bad?" I sound hoarse.

"Worse." Damien says bleakly. I nod again, my chin bumping convulsively against my chest.

"Do it."

Damien hesitates for a moment until an impatient movement of my head spurs him on.

Damien's hand reaches for my chest, _through_ my chest. It's like a slap to the face, like bucket of ice water dumped over my head. I expect the feeling to fade, but it doesn't. It's like I'm missing something and a cold breeze is blowing past where it used to be.

Damien pulls his fist back. Something sparkles through his fingers, if sparkle is the right word. It sheds darkness, not light

He slowly uncurls his fingers and the darkling thing fades away before I can get a good look at it. I feel the loss sharply, a knife in my chest that does not fade.

"It's starting to hurt." I take a deep breath. "How long?"

"It'll take a minute."

"Right." I open the door and walk into the room. Stan looks up from where he's examining his hat in his hands. The look he gives me is funny and I wonder if something in my expression gave me away.

"Hey, Stan." If my face didn't give me away, my voice certainly does. It's too bright and cheerful. I don't sound like that even when I'm happy.

"What'd you guys talk about?" He sounds tense. He's trying to play it cool like he thinks nothing's wrong and utterly failing. Subtlety was never his strong suit.

"Nothing much." I have to smile at him, grief and melancholy beginning to swirl back into me. The purpose that had kept my head above water before is almost gone now. My endurance is nearing its limit.

"Kenny." I can tell Stan's panicking. My smile must have been too sad or something. I'm having trouble with controlling anything in my body. The pain is growing tendrils of fire down my limbs.

"It's ok, Stan." I tell him.

"Kenny, what are you doing?" he's pacing like he always does when he's upset. Prowling like a caged tiger.

"Stan, please calm down." I'm weakening, the tendrils of fire thickening into tree trunks. My control breaks for a fraction of a second and I twitch.

"Hold on for a few more seconds." I hear Damien in my ear, a voice Stan can't hear.

"Tell me what's going on!" He's really panicking now.

"Stan." I grit out. I can barely force my voice to sound normal. "Trust me. Please."

"Kenny." And now he's using his pleading voice, the one I can't resist. But Damien's whispering in my ear telling me it's ok, he's ready to go.

"Bye, Stan." I whisper. My voice breaks like a brittle twig on his name.

"Kenny!" he lunges forward, trying to grab a hold of me. But he's fading already and his hand barely brushes me.

That's enough.

His fingers rake my arm, ripping through my skin and drawing rivulets of blood. I whimper, twisting away from him and off my chair. I hit the ground.

I feel my shoulder snap with a sickening feeling of things giving that shouldn't, and the bone punches right through the skin. Though it takes everything I have, I hold in my shriek of agony.

"He's gone." Damien, though far away, sounds sad. For me? I can't tell.

I roll onto my back and scream. I scream and scream, using up the air in my lungs, only to draw in another sobbing breath and keep going. The pain reaches new crescendos, already past anything I've ever experienced and growing.

Every time I move, I break something else. My arm. A finger. A toe. But I have to move, to twist and roll, the agony tied like puppet strings to my muscles. It's an excruciating downward spiral with no end in sight. I'm choking on blood. It's coming out everywhere and I can't _see_.

The only thing that keeping away the dark shadows of insanity I can feel eating at the corners of my mind is the thought that this is for Stan. I'm saving Stan.

* * *

**a/n**

so how was that for a plan? :D awesome, i know (jkjk it suuuucks)

it's like two in the morning and i'm deliriously tired so no witty anti-flame warning for you :V


	5. You're Alive

YAY POV change! about time we hear from Stan, amirite?

warning, stan has a major guilt complex. like, whoa. prepare for the emo fit to end all emo fits.

**a/n**

* * *

It's like a lightning bolt strikes me, right in the stomach. I double over, tears streaming down my face and blinding me. I barely notice the pain because, damnit, it seems so trivial.

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. _

_His expression. His fucking expression. Shit. Fuck. _

I don't know where I am. Pain like acid is ripping at me and when I try to focus past that I smash into a wall of guilt and grief a trillion times worse than the pain could ever be.

_All the blood. Fuck. And his skin. Shit. Shit. Shit. _

I can't tell if anything I'm feeling and think and remembering is real. I can't see anything because I've squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to block out the images. It doesn't help. They keep coming in lurid flashes and I think I vomit but I'm not sure. I never had the best control over my stomach.

"_Stan_." My thoughts are interrupted by the sensation of a body slamming into me. I cry out in shock and realize that I had been holding my breath.

When I breathe in, I realize Kyle is holding me. I can smell kosher food. But I won't open my eyes. I fucking won't. That would make it too real. I can't handle how everything went so very wrong, so very fast.

_So wrong. So fast. How did this happen? _

"Stan, you're alive!" Kyle's holding me too tightly. I can't breathe and I'm panicking. I claw at him, and then torn skin flashes past my eyelids and vomit rushes up my esophagus and Kyle instinctively lets go of me. I draw in a deep breath, choking on more vomit, coughing it up along with the metallic taste that my imagination is telling me is blood.

I believe it. Unconditionally I believe it.

"He's not… he's not. He's… dead, not coming. Coming back." I don't recognize my own voice. It's high-pitched, breathy, and crackles like old paper.

Kyle stills for a moment. I try to draw in deeper breaths, slowing myself down. I can't stop panting and I think I'm hyperventilating.

Kyle starts to tremble. I reach out blindly and cling to him. I'm losing the battle against the panting. Every exhalation feels like it's ripped out of me, every inhale feels like sandpaper in my fragile lungs.

"Kenny." I sob out. My bones are aching and I don't know if its fatigue or whatever Kenny did to send me… back. "Kenny. He's gone, Kyle, he's fucking _gone_." My voice runs the words together and breaks them apart, until I couldn't tell if they were my words or just my sobs.

"I know." Kyle's voice sounds like old, cold buildings. Like used newspapers, dead leaves, and rusty swing sets. Forgotten things. Things even their owners have dropped and left behind.

I can't see anything, nothing but how skin had parted like wet tissue paper, how blood had welled, and his animalistic expression of fear and pain. The darkness behind my eyes, lit only by these awful things, is unbearable.

"We need him, Kyle." I sob. "I need him." My voice gains some strength from this realization. It is false strength, the glimmer of Fools Gold, but I need it. I'm breaking, and using everything I have to stop it from tearing me apart.

I look at him at last, opening my eyes and letting the tears part and stream down my cheeks.

"I know." His face has shut down. The tears he lets fall do so from eyes that have no emotion in them.

I let go and collapse onto the floor. I'm so used to being the one who _watches_. I don't know how to take something like this, something so close to me. Things like this just don't happen to Stan Marsh.

I feel so helpless.

After almost an hour Kyle finally ignores my pleas for isolation and calls his mother up. When I hear her thundering up the stairs I curl into a fetal position and hide my eyes, ignoring Kyle's whispered apology. He doesn't know why I don't want to see or speak or touch another human being. He hadn't been there, and so I forgive him, but I do not want to see Sheila Broflovski.

Mrs. Broflovski's harsh caw of a voice interrupts Kyle's increasingly desperate attempts to get me to listen. I flinch.

"Stanley!"

I curl up tighter, trying to block her out. I hear Kyle trying to calm his mother down, but typically she plows on, picking me up bodily and enveloping me in her thick arms. Again I panic, struggling frantically against her constricting embrace.

I doubt she notices.

"Stanley, you're here!" she exclaims, settling me back down on the ground. I promptly curl up again, shuddering. Her embrace had sent flashes of blood and skin back across my eyes. They had almost stopped before she touched me.

Mrs. Broflovski doesn't even see me, intent on her plans to personally tell everyone in town I was back. Kyle steps up, ready to do battle to stop her from going too far. I would have sent him a grateful look… but I don't want to look at anything right now.

A small hand on my shoulder that I don't recognize makes me lift my head slightly in surprise. Ike pats my shoulder and moves back, watching me with eyes that seem to know everything. I remember vaguely that can't he see the dead?

I wonder what I look like to him.

When Kyle has finally convinced his mother not to hire a blimp to run a banner across the sky, Mrs. Broflovski goes downstairs to call my mother. Ike follows her, keeping his dark eyes on me the whole time. I can't look away from them, unable to shake the sense that he knows.

"Stan. Dude?" Kyle finally speaks up. I turn to look at him, rubbing eyes gritty with shed tears. He's miserable, I can tell at a glance. I lick my lips compulsively and reach out. He smiles shakily and grabs my hand, grounding himself in the contact.

"They don't understand." He offers by way of explanation. I nod. I know. They simply don't understand that I might be back but Kenny never would be. They don't understand that it's my fault that they would never see him again. They don't understand the full scope of the sin that I've committed.

Yet.

* * *

My mom opens the door with an expression on her face like someone walking to their execution. I take a deep breath and tighten my vicious grip on Kyle's arm. He hisses but doesn't complain.

When she sees me she stands there in the door for the longest time. I can't look away, won't move towards her. We're frozen in perfect equilibrium.

The noise she makes is indescribable, not quite a scream, not quite a moan. It rises from her like a wave, cresting and breaking and slamming into me, pure emotional force so raw I can't comprehend it.

I make a sound like a whimper but quieter. Kyle is the only one that hears me, and he is torn away when my mother runs to me and scoops me into my third unwelcome embrace of the hour. I manage to catch myself before I shove her away.

Later, when I've been cried over and screamed at and barely managed to keep myself together, mom herds me out the door and into our car. I look back at Kyle, the irrational fear of losing him running through me like poison. He reaches after me hopelessly, an empty reassurance. I smile weakly and allow myself to be dragged to the car.

We reach home in silence. Mom steals glances at me out of the corner of her eye, like I'll evaporate if she doesn't keep an eye on me. I suffer them in silence, wrapping my arms defensively around myself as we walk to the door.

When I walk in I'm struck by the silence. The house sounds empty and sad, every movement echoing in the vast dead space. Mom closes the door cautiously and points above us, to the second floor.

"Your dad and Shelly are asleep." She whispers. I nod and look at my shoes. They're shuffling nervously on the carpet and I realize I feel out of place here, in my own home. I realize I can't remember what color my room is.

"I… do you want something to eat?" Mom sounds shaky and I feel vaguely sorry for her. I'm not acting normal. But I can't remember how to act normal. There's this big block in the way, and its name is Kenny, and it's dead.

"I'm fine." I hesitate, then take my shoes off and follow her into the kitchen. She moves around awkwardly, still stealing glances at me. I bite my lip and put my hands in my pockets. It's painfully awkward and stiff and I can't find it in myself to reassure her.

At last she stops pretending to do something and just stares at me. I stare back, trying to find the right thing to do, to say, to feel.

"I'm so glad you're home." she sighs at last, reaching out and cupping my face in her hand. I let her, though the urge to flinch is strong.

"You're safe now." She breathes, nodding like it's final. She sounds so reassuring and sympathetic I decide to explain to her my sin. She has to understand, she has to know before she forgives me.

"Mom. I killed Kenny." I whisper, hoping she'll realize exactly what I mean.

"Stan, you can't blame yourself." She tells me gently. "It just happened. It's not your fault. Sometimes bad things happen to good people."

I pull away. She _doesn't understand_.

Anger, nauseating and irrational, bubbles in my stomach. For a terrifying, dizzying moment I want to hurt her, dig nonexistent claws into her face, break her bones, rip her apart limb from limb, from the inside out. I want to show her what I did to Kenny, to take it out on her so that she _understands_ and _hates_ me the way I need to be hated.

I reign myself in with a sharp twist of my head. I'm crazy, but sane enough to realize that torturing my _mother_ is something so horrific I shouldn't even be considering it.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Bad things happen to good people. I'm not ok. We need Kenny.

Mom folds her arms around me. I suffer them in silence, trying to reconnect these disjointed, meaningless fragments of self into me again. It's as impossible as a trillion piece jigsaw puzzle of a cloudless sky.

* * *

The next day mom pulls me out of bed and tells me that I should go to school.

"To reassure your friends." She says. I nod, though there is no agreement behind it. The only friends I truly care about know everything. The rest can fuck themselves.

But I can't find the energy to argue with her. She looks so hopeful, so happy. Like an enormous weight has been lifted from her. I can't hurt her any more than I already have.

She drives me to the school, taking the time to look at me more. I stare out the window, feeling numb.

The instant I arrive at the school Kyle latches onto me. Not a moment too soon, because as soon as I've taken my first step I'm enveloped by a swirling mass of people, all incredulous at my miraculous return. They ask questions and argue and push to see me. I shudder and try to avoid touching them.

Movement becomes impossible when Kyle and I get in the doors and our closest classmates, the ones who came with us all the way from South Park Elementary, see me. I'm grabbed, hugged, punched, and only just manage to dodge a kiss in the first few seconds. Nausea bubbles constantly in my stomach.

Finally, when the tardy bell rings, the crowd calms down, the freshman and sophomores disappearing to their classes. Through the thinning batches of people I catch a glimpse of Cartman, standing against the wall and examining the crowd with what I would have called, if I hadn't known better, a look of concern.

At the second I notice him he looks up and meets my eyes. His expression, alien and dark, makes me wonder if he knows already.

Kyle touches my shoulder and points, frantically but discretely, into the crowd. I glance around again and see Tweek, tugging on Craig's sleeve. With a sense of dread I see that he's looking around in confusion, searching for something.

Or someone.

"Craig." I hear him murmur to Craig, who is staring at me with a weird mixture of shock and reluctant happiness. "Craig, _ngh_, Kenny. Where's – _GAH! _– Kenny?"

I can't stick around for this. I _can't_.

I break with a sob and turn, pushing people aside, dashing pell-mell down the halls. They shout after me in confusion, and then I hear Kyle's voice rising, trembling like I know it always will now when he talks about Kenny.

I push open the doors and burst out into the sunlight. The warmth striates against me for a moment before the chill of the snow cuts it away. I shiver once and take another step, ready to flee all the way back to my house, to where I can hide from this.

"Stan!" A hand snags my jacket, arresting my momentum. I look down the arm attached to me and find Wendy at the end of it. She's looking at me with dramatically made up eyes, body draped entirely in fashionable black. She's in mourning.

I note that she doesn't look like Kyle had looked, like she'd been so fundamentally destroyed by my death that she couldn't even breathe. And she doesn't have Kenny's broken smile. She's no flightless bird, jumping off a cliff to save me.

Her grief is graceful, abstract, _manufactured_. She hadn't _really_ cared.

"You're alive." She sighs with a smile, hugging me carefully. I refrain from shoving her away with an effort.

"Kenny's dead." I mumble, on the hopeless dream that she'll understand. Wendy steps back and looks at me with slight confusion.

"That's too bad. But he'll be back, right?" Her smile is quizzical. I look past her in the open doors and see Kyle talking quietly to a group of people, wiping his eyes occasionally. I see Tweek, collapsed on the floor tiles sobbing his heart out, Craig wrapped unashamedly around him. I see Cartman standing alone, head bowed, eyes shut.

"I hate you." I whisper to her with all the emotion in my body. Except I'm not talking to her, not really. I'm talking to the universe, God, whoever decided to play these cruel games with us.

She lets go of me in shock and I run again.

I can't stand it here. The world bruises me, cuts me with its sharp edges, blinds me with its spiteful reality. My childlike sense of fairness is crying out in rejection of this. There must be an escape route. There has to be a way for this to have a happy ending.

* * *

**a/n**

happy chapter, i know ._.

****

flames will be used to fuel my pyromania


	6. Fifth Step

I am an evil, evil person. i'm sorry. writers block is a bitch is all i'm going to say T.T

enjoy!

**a/n**

* * *

"Dear, why are you home?" my mom asks, looking terrified as I storm in the door. I spare her a smile intended to be reassuring. Her whitening face tells me I failed but I just can't find it in me to care right now. All I want to do is curl up and forget anything ever happened. Is that too much to ask for.

Slow as melting lead my feet move up the stairs. Every footstep feels final, muffled as they are by the carpet.

"Stan!" My mother's hand on my shoulder makes me whirl, and as I do I drop into a defensive crouch, trying to _evade evade evade_! No contact, no touch, the feeling is only bad memories of ripping and bleeding.

My heel slams into the step behind me and I find my center of balance shifting backwards. I throw myself forward, over correcting. And then I'm falling and the movies lied, things don't slow down so you can remember how to fall, everything speeds up to a trillion miles an hour and the next thing I know is bone crunching.

My feet are on the fifth step. My shoulders rest on the floor. My neck is at an impossible angle.

The salty, copper taint of blood spreads over my tongue, followed quickly by agony that makes my return seem laughably easy. I want to scream but I'm being systematically cut away from my body. I can feel my nerves shutting down and muscles tightening. It's complete blackout, but I can see, blurrily, my mother's contorted, fearful face.

White mist is descends over me like a wave, painting everything in increasingly light shades. As death creeps over me, I realize something.

I am Kenny.

The knowledge imprints itself on my mind indelibly, striking fear and relief and selfish anger from me like sparks from a flint stone. And I almost have to smile. After a fashion, I _have_ saved Kenny from dying.

By making him dead forever.

* * *

When I open my eyes I wish I hadn't. The dull waiting room is awful, bland and full of quietly murmuring people. I wait a moment for someone to look at me accusingly. I think no one notices me until I see the angel behind the desk. He gives me a studiously blank look that makes me cower. It knows. It knows everything.

I walk up and take my place behind the man the angel is helping. They converse quietly for a time and then the angel hands over a glowing card of some type. When I take a disinterested look it has a number printed on it so large it makes me take a second startled glance. And then the man is wandering out the door and I'm face-to-face with the knowing gaze of this ruined angel.

"Stan." He says. The pale cast my guilt has lent my face is canceled out by my embarrassed flush.

"Yeah?" I ask unsteadily. He offers me a mirthless, comfortless smile.

"You can head over to Damien's office if you like." He gestures to the door the man has just wandered out of. I look at him questioningly, desperately, but he simply gestures toward the door. I walk out feeling both sick and relieved. Someone finally understood. Someone finally hated me like I deserved, like I craved.

Outside the gray people mill in endless circles. I ignore them. They're only scenery. Damien's giant-ass building looms in the distance like some sort of evil tumor that spurts rainbows.

I wonder what's – who's – in there.

* * *

When the elevator doors open Kenny throws himself through and latches onto me. I'm sent stumbling into the back wall of the elevator by the impact.

"Kenny?" I ask. His solidity, his breathing form, is balm to my wounded psyche.

"Stan! I didn't know if you would die too." Kenny pulls back with a bright smile that has me smiling weakly back. He tugs me into the room I remember from before. Damien glares at me from the couch but I don't really care, not when Kenny's right here, bright and vital and solid enough that I can almost fool myself into believing he's alive. I can't pry my eyes away from him, looking everywhere for the blood and tattered skin that I remember.

"So how'd you die?" Kenny asks, plopping down on the back of the couch. Damien shakes his head and scoots over so Kenny's butt isn't right in his face. I settle hesitantly next to him and shrug.

"Tripped down the stairs and broke my neck." I shrug, judiciously cutting my insanity out of the sentence. My mind was clear enough now to know how outright crazy my thinking has been for the last day.

"Did it hurt?" Kenny asks, nodding like he was expecting it.

"Yeah…" I answer, narrowing my eyes. He doesn't notice.

"That'll happen every time. I'm sorry." He shrugs.

The statement connects two of my suspicious thoughts, sending something very like an electric current through me. I jolt up and grab him by the shoulders.

"You went through that _every time_?" I ask, horrified. Kenny looks at me with wide, surprised eyes.

"…Yes?" he answers hesitantly.

"And you never _said_ anything?" The volume of my voice has Kenny wincing. He shrinks back a little, looking almost scared.

"…No?" he answered at last, voice making it a question.

"Why didn't you _trust_ us?" I ask. My volume is enough to vibrate the window now. Kenny flinches, but the next instant his face hardens into a mask of hurt and anger.

"What could you have done?" He hisses. "What could anyone have _done_?" What his voice lacks in volume it makes up in venom. It's pure acid, corrosive and malignant. Suddenly it's me on the defensive.

"You didn't trust us." I decide to reiterate. It's safe ground, a point Kenny can't refute. I'm not sure when this changed from honest sympathy for my friend to pitched verbal battle, but I can't find any way back to that. This is a runaway train, both of us clawing at each other, hurting each other, for no reason but fear.

"You couldn't know that it hurt," Kenny draws himself upright and glares at me, face pale and hard, "because you would have-!" He cuts himself off. Not soon enough, though. I know what he meant to say.

"I would have tried to stop it." I finish with deadly calm that isn't calm at all. "Like I tried to stop you dying."

Kenny lifts his head high and proud, swallowing hard.

"You shouldn't have." His voice is thick, throat clogged with arrogance or tears. "You should have let me die."

"Kenny." I start. He throws out a hand in my direction. With the other he covers his eyes.

"Why." He sounds lost, but he's backing away from me. I don't miss the fact he has his back to the door. "Don't you just stop caring about me?"

He turns and runs.

"Kenny!" I shout after the fleeing blonde.

"Don't bother. He'll come back eventually." I flinch and realize that Kenny and I weren't alone. We had a watcher.

Damien sits on the couch, running a formidable looking character around a well-animated field. Things try to attack him and are batted aside as easily as crushing flies. The animated blood has me gulping back nausea. Instead of facing it I turn to the picture window in the far wall. Endless rolling plains filled with gray people. Colors wander here and there. An orange one bullets away from the building like a shooting star. I watch it until it I can't distinguish the colors anymore.

"What happened to him?" I ask. Damien knows what I mean.

"He wants me to lie to you about that. Soften it up, you know?" Damien rolls his head back on the sofa to look at me. His grin is twice as disconcerting upside down. "Me, I think you're a _big_ boy. You can handle yourself, can't you?"

He patronizing tone makes me scowl, but I don't rise to the bait. His words have me too anxious.

"What happened." I reiterate.

"You sure you want to know? Kenny didn't want to tell you." Damien is giving me an escape clause he knows I won't use.

"I need to know." I don't try to mask how the guilt and curiosity are tearing into me. Damien grins his crocodile grin.

"His body was ripping itself apart. It was trying to find and replace what he gave you. You know. Immortality." Damien keeps smiling, eyes hard. "Every time he moved it stripped skin in _sheets_ from his body and snapped his bones like matchsticks. Popped his eyeballs like grapes. Blood coming out every place it could. You haven't seen suffering until you've seen someone bleeding from his mouth and nose, eyes, ears… and _other_ places. And you know the _worst_ part?"

I can feel vomit creeping up my throat but I manage to choke out a quick 'what?'

"He wouldn't. Stop. Screaming."

The images my fertile imagination produce destroy me. I'm on my knees in an instant, choking up bile and guilt.

"It's your fault." Damien moves to stand next to me. I can't look up, vomit still ebbing in my throat, but I nod in agreement, accepting the misery like a penance. "You hurt him. So badly. You'll _never_ understand what he's given up for you."

I choke up the last of the vomit and take in a huge breath. Strings of saliva and half-digested food dribble from my slack mouth. I wipe them away and attempt to stand. Damien is at my side, neither hindering nor helping.

"He's lost his life, his family, _everything_. And all for you, you stupid, stupid boy. You don't deserve him. You don't even know why he saved you, do you?" Damien's voice snaps out viciously, vindicating the dark thoughts slithering through my unconscious.

I start to collapse back towards my pool of vomit. My body just isn't built to handle the stress of my tenuous mental balance. Now it's tipping and everything is sliding even farther down the steep, slippery slope.

And then a miraculous voice rings out and a hand thrusts him aside.

"_Stop it_!"

Strong hands lift me and lean me against someone small and bony. I open my eye the slightest bit and recognize the mane of golden hair.

"Kenny?" I ask. My voice is hoarse.

"Shut up, Stan." Kenny pats my shoulder and turns on Damien, who shuts his mouth so fast his teeth click. Which is like yelling in shock for a normal person. I blink, then remember I have to open my eyes. All I want to do is sleep, to delay everything until I have the energy to deal with it.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? I told you not to tell him what happened!" Even Kenny's yelling isn't helping. I'm just feeling so sleepy.

"He deserves it." Damien hisses. "He did _that_ to you."

"He didn't. I did it to myself. He would have stopped me if he could." Kenny's voice is like a whip crack. I never knew it could get that sharp.

"Kenny…?" I ask, tugging on his sleeve. He glances down at me, then sighs and closes his eyes momentarily. I blink hard, trying to clear the film of exhaustion from my eyes so that I can see him clearly.

"It's ok, Stan. This is how you go back. Just close your eyes, and when you open them you'll be home." He sounds so reassuring. But his words make me struggle upright.

"I don't want to go back!" I sulk away from Kenny. He laughs in a melancholy way.

"You have to, Stan. Do you want to waste my gift?" His voice takes on a chiding tone that I know is a manipulation. But my mind also registers his words and they bring a wave of guilt that buries the knowledge.

"No." I say in a small voice. Kenny laughs and shrugs. It sounds forced.

"Then close your eyes and… let go." He makes a fluttering motion with his fingers that for some reason makes me want to close my eyes. I obey the urge. There's no point in trying to fight it. It feels inevitable. And I know I'll be back. I'm Kenny now.

I shut my eyes.

* * *

**a/n**

ugh i hate this chapter. it's basically filler *cry forever*

**flames will be used on my summer homework :D**


	7. Like an Elephant

you guys have the right to stone me to death T.T there is no excuse for not writing. i am an awful, awful person

Anyway.

Whats this? is stenny on the horizon? i think it is! :D YAAAAAAAAY!

about time XP

Enjoy!

**a/n**

* * *

I open my eyes on the living room couch. Mom sits in the chair across the room, head in her hands. Every now and then her shoulders heave in what I assume are sobs.

I sit up and her head whips around to look at me. Her cheeks are tear-stained and almost absently I note the pang of guilt. One more weight added to my already heavy shoulders. It hardly matters, however; I feel as though I'm carrying a mountain.

"Stan, I was so scared." Mom whimpers. I steel myself and open my arms. She jumps forward and embraces me so tightly I know I'm going to suffocate. I take the desire to claw my way out of her constricting arms and chain it up deep inside me. I'm not going to hurt her. Never.

"I'm sorry mom. Looks like I pulled a Kenny." I chuckle painfully. She nods tearfully and pulls back to look at me. A time passes when I'm frozen stiffly under her gaze.

"He's not coming back, is he?" She asks at last.

My head flies back and I jerk out of her loosened embrace instinctively. I end up crouched against the back of the couch, braced and breathing hard. She looks at me with something almost like fear and exactly like pity.

"No." My voice comes out raspy. She nods.

"I'm sorry I didn't understand." She says. It's my turn to nod. I do it stiffly and don't relax out of my defensive posture until she's returned to the chair across from the couch. I settle back on the seat with a skittish caution that my mom watches with old, old eyes.

"You don't have to go back to school until you feel like you can." She hesitates. "You're going to die more… aren't you?"

"Yeah." I clear my throat. The tearing sound makes Mom jump.

"Well." She takes a deep breath and puts on a brave smile. "Call me if you need me."

"Kay." She deserves better than that, but I don't know what to do. The things I need to do to reassure her are the very things my whole soul rejects. I can't touch her. I can't find the warmth in me to smile. The words I need to speak simply won't come.

* * *

Kyle comes into my room a few hours later. I don't know exactly how long; Time doesn't mean all that much anymore. He settles beside me on the bed and stares at the floor. I can feel his closed off, rigid control from here. That's how he's dealing, then. He's shutting off the parts of himself in pain, freezing away the feeling.

He always was a good deal neater than I was. More controlled.

I notice the oppressive silence my room contains at last. The heavy air seems to dull sound, clutching it tight and making every movement linger forever. Everything seems slower and less connected to reality in here.

"Wendy came in crying, you know." Kyle says at last, reproachfully. "You could have been a little gentler. She was a mess when you… d-died." He can't even say the word without stuttering. I wait for the echoes of the words to die away before I open my mouth to speak.

"She didn't die." I mumble into my hands. I sense Kyle's confusion but don't bother to look up while I continue. "She didn't lose any of herself when I died. Not like you. _Not_ like Kenny." I spit out the last sentence.

Kyle is silent for a long time.

"Wendy loves you just as much as Kenny." He says at last. This statement makes me lift my head. It doesn't fit into our conversation and the confusion is enough to break through the apathy.

"Who said anything about love?" I ask. Kyle frowned in confusion.

"Isn't that what this is about?" He answers with a question. I recoil, pulling into myself and away from those thoughts.

I understand the comparison Kyle was making was not exact, that he didn't mean that Kenny and Wendy loved me the same way. He has a looser definition of love than me. But that doesn't really matter. My traitorous subconscious is throwing out questions I try not to focus on. Why Kenny would die for me. Why he had and Kyle hadn't, Wendy hadn't. What exactly Damien meant about what Kenny gave up for me. But I'm not going to think about that. It would drive me insane.

"Wendy doesn't love me." I say quietly, because it's the truth and Kyle knows it, and because it's something else to focus on. I knew it, even before all this, knew it and denied it. But I have no denial anymore.

Kyle struggles for moment before conceding with a bowed head.

"Maybe not." He spreads his hands like he's offering me the thought for examination. I look away, back to my feet. I don't want to accept that. But I find, when I search for the indignation and sadness that always came when I was confronted with more evidence Wendy didn't love me, that I already have. Something else is eating at my numbness.

That thought, Kenny and the concept of love, resplendent in all its accompanying baggage, has settled into the middle of my mind. It demands my attention, my acknowledgment, my careful consideration. And I can feel the thought settling into an obsession. I despair, because I know where this is going to lead.

* * *

I died on the tracks.

I wasn't exactly intending to die, not that I was going out of my way to avoid it. I just wanted to work the obsession out of my head. My thoughts wouldn't stop returning to Kenny, again and again. I examined everything I could remember saying to him, thinking about him, doing with him, wondering what my motives were, what his motives were. But it was so hard to tell with Kenny. He came on to everyone, anyone that moved, me included. And how could I tell if he meant it or not? I had never considered him like this, I knew that much.

I kept coming back to that moment when I had flung myself into him, into the path of the bullets. It had all been a blur at the time, my memory of it patchy at best. I couldn't remember what the man who had shot me had looked like. I couldn't remember exactly why we had been there, why I was standing right next to Kenny. I couldn't even remember what had been going through my head when I had done it. But I could remember his face.

He had closed his eyes.

He had closed his eyes and flinched away. Killing himself for no other reason than he didn't want us to be hurt. And I finally remembered what I had been thinking when I had flung myself into the path of death for him.

_He doesn't deserve this. Not him. Not again._

That's when the train hits me, at roughly a hundred ten miles an hour. Right in the middle of my epiphany.

So this is what it's like. Being Kenny.

* * *

I fall into my dreaded waiting room chair with the knowledge of what I have to do in the middle of my head like a rock. A simple test. That's all it is. I try to convince myself with little luck. My obsessive subconscious is taking no prisoners today.

With all the dread of a man climbing the stairs to his execution I get to my feet. The angel is eyeing me with his heatless hate. I bow my head to accept it and move past him to the door. He gives me a stiff nod that I return before I'm let out onto the gray, airless planes.

My plan is like an elephant sitting on my chest. I can't breathe. And I feel rather small and disgusting for even thinking of it.

When Damien's elevator doors open I step in with my eyes on my feet. Damien's evil aura isn't radiating at me, so I look up just in time to catch Kenny's wave of greeting. He's playing some game with all his might, throwing his whole body into each movement onscreen. Its funny to watch him throw himself all over the couch and I grin, losing myself for a moment in his familiar antics.

With a shower of blood and a death scream that makes me wince Kenny dies. He curses and throws his controller away, sitting for a moment and pouting. I try to avoid staring at him, but I can't help it. I'm looking at him, analyzing what he looks like and how it makes me feel. He doesn't seem to notice, too busy kicking at the wires and mumbling some highly creative suggestions under his breath.

This is getting ridiculous fast. I have to do something or I'm going to explode in a shower of guts and frustration.

"Hey Stan." He says at last, sitting up and smiling cheerfully. I pull myself back together and smile back.

"Hey." I feel fragile, almost. I don't want to move in case I destroy whatever is holding the whole world at bay. As long as I don't move, everything will stay the same. As long as I can look at Kenny, know he's there, the guilt won't hurt me anymore.

Kenny gestures impatiently over. I walk over, testing myself every step of the way.

"How is everyone? Damien won't let me see them. Are they ok?" He asks, picking the controller up again. His smile draws my attention to his lips, where I was hoping it wouldn't go. I pick nervously at the couch fabric. My hands want to do something, anything to stop the obsessive thought from picking at the back of my mind. It's like an itch just where I can't scratch. Without meaning to, I find myself shifting towards him, gravitating to him like he is the sun and I am a plant in the shade.

When i don't answer him he nudges me with his shoulder.

"Everyone misses you. Me and Kyle especially." I fall back with a sigh. I can't do it. I can't go through with it. I can't watch that smile dim. I can't hurt him like that.

"What about Cartman?" Kenny's watching the screen now with an expression of concentration the loading bar really doesn't warrant and so he misses my glance of confusion. I didn't know he cared all that much about Cartman.

"He's not cutting his wrist in the bathtub if that's what you want to know." I say dryly. Kenny laughs and elbows me.

"As if he could find a vein under all that fat!" I laugh along with him but I can't help a little pang of guilt. Cartman's tight expression when he heard the news keeps running through my head.

When I finally close my eyes and wake up home, I can't remember a single thing that we said after that. And I can't shake the dragging feeling that I failed.

* * *

**a/n**

not as much filler this time around :D

this thing is four pages in word :( why does it feel like so little?

predictions on wether Stan will get up the balls to put his plan into action? :D

**flames will be used on my school homework**


	8. AP English

Writing this on the laptop im using was E-V-I-L. its got a horrible jacked-up screen, so i apologize for all the errors there no doubt are scattered everywhere.

i'm envisioning this thing having one or two more chapters :D almost done! now i can focus on my new story -.- yay

enjoy!

**a/n**

* * *

School has calmed down. They've gotten used to me being back. They still look around for Kenny, though. I see them do it every day. They look up when the door opens, and look down when it's just me. They don't really want me. They want Kenny.

I mostly keep my head down. I don't want anyone to know that I would trade them all to have Kenny back. Sometimes, in the darker moments, when Kenny seems so close I could almost touch him and so far away I can't even remember his face, I would even trade Kyle.

I don't even remember who my teachers are. Their names have disappeared into the holes in my memory and I can't summon the interest to find them. I float through the halls guided by Kyle more than my patchy memory. He says its because he wants to hang out more but I know why. I wander away sometimes, find a corner to sit in, and let my mind spin away. He worries I will just disappear again.

It's one of the times Kyle can't come with me to my classes that Craig catches me.

A hand on my shoulder makes me whirl away. I end up slamming into someone's locker. Craig stares in my general direction, expression unapologetic. Tweek hovers a few feet away, twitching with anxiety. I can halfway hear him muttering crazy things to himself.

"What." I ask. My tone is so flat the word might as well be printed in a book.

"Tweek wants to talk to you." Craig won't meet my eyes. I lock my hands behind my back and stop trying to find his reluctant gaze. I look up at the ceiling instead, concentrating on the patterns of the watermarks.

"Ok." I don't bother to add any emotion to my voice. I sound like him, a little bit. Emotionless and monotonous.

Craig doesn't say anything and when I look back at him he's looking at me with actual feeling in his gaze. Too bad its pity.

When I figure out what the look means a spurt of annoyance almost animates my limbs. But before the feeling summons any heat to my body the heavy lethargy snaps its jaws around the feeling and it sinks back into the still, cold water that seems to sit so lifelessly in my veins. I look at Craig dispassionately until he nods. I don't know what I've confirmed for him and I don't care. I just want this to be over.

The bell rings, breaking the stalemate. The halls are empty of anyone but us.

"He was friends with Kenny." I admire the way he says the name, without flinching or looking at me guiltily. "Don't hurt his feelings. He's in enough pain as it is."

I find that I do have enough warmth in me to smile. I offer the expression to Craig.

"I won't."

Craig nods again and turns, beckoning to Tweek. He twitches several times and cautiously approaches. Craig walks a few feet away and stares blankly at a locker, giving us our privacy.

Tweek looks like even more of a mess than usual. His shoulders keep twitching up and down, like he wants to grab his hair but isn't letting himself. I wait for him to speak like I waited for Craig. Motionless. _E_motionless.

"Did it _ngh_ hurt him? When _GAH!_ he died?" Tweek asked after a few spastic twitches, looking at me with typical Tweek-y anxiety. I look down at him for a long moment. And then I find the scant warmth to give him a gentle smile.

"No." I lie. "He said it felt like falling out of bed or something. He's Kenny, you know how he can be." I shrug. Tweek smiles back nervously.

"Thanks Stan. _Gah!_" He pats my shoulder gingerly and runs back to Craig, clinging to him. I watch him go, the smile and the warmth draining away. Craig looks over Tweek's head and nods to me. I look back, blink once, and turn away. I have class soon.

* * *

The last period of the day is my least favorite. AP English. I used to have it with Kyle and Kenny. Kenny used to sit next to me. Kyle sits two chairs down and one to the left. He turns to look at me every now and then, checking on my mental state. I had broken down the first day when I had seen his empty seat. The sight of the scarred desk without an orange parka sprawled in it was the last straw.

A little thrill of pain runs through my ribcage every time I see his chair, but I've gotten better about not looking. The teacher still hasn't filled in the seat. None of them have. They also expect Kenny to walk back into our lives with a smile and a perverted joke.

I put my head down on my desk and half-listen to the teacher. I feel like an ancient rubber band, brittle and stretched out. I keep expecting this to somehow get better. But it so hard to even get up in the mornings that I wonder if it'll ever get any better.

"Kevin, if you would pass out the textbooks?" The teacher drones. Keven edges past my bag and starts pulling books down.

The bookcase behind me creaks once in warning. Kevin curses in surprise and jumps away. I don't even bother to move, to try to escape. I want this to happen.

With a fateful squeal the braces part company with the wall. Books rain down around me, miraculously not touching any of my neighbors. I keep my eyes open, locked on Kyle's horrified gaze. I blink at him once before the bookcase slams into my head. I feel it crushing my skull, the bone popping like an egg, gray brain and crimson blood running over the sides of the desk. They form little puddles that join and spread in a slowly expanding circle.

I see it all standing above myself. As if from far away I hear Kyle's whimper, my classmates whispering among themselves. The teacher shushes them all, voice somber, and tells Kyle to get the janitor. After a slight pause where she examines Kyle's face she tells him he can go to the nurse afterward.

I fade away as Kyle leaves the room, into the white mist that I'm not sure really exists. It feels like an in-between, someplace no one has ever been, unformed and disused. I close my eyes and somehow sink down. I don't want to deal with this.

When I slam into the waiting room I'm on the floor. The man about to put his foot down on my stomach stumbles in surprise and falls back into the empty chair behind him. I look at him blankly for a moment and then close my eyes again. I can't summon the need to move my body.

If I stay here forever, I won't ever have to face Kenny. I can pretend the only thing that exists is this comforting darkness.

* * *

My illusion of calm is interrupted by the boot planted in my gut. I cough and my eyes fly open. Damien scowls down at me. Peering nervously out from behind him is Shay, the secretary-angel. I blink dully at him before turning my questioning gaze on Damien.

"Get up, Stan." Damien's voice is haughty. He sounds like a noble telling a peasant off for falling under the wheels of his carriage and getting blood all over the nice new paint. I slowly push myself to my feet. My muscles ache, informing me that they aren't happy with me either. I silently tell them to get in line.

"Yeah?" I give him an even look. I don't want to get on the Anti-Christ's bad side. On the other hand, I'm not sure he has any other side.

"You are a pussy." Damien's haughty expression sours even more, if that's even possible. I sigh and shrug. No insult Damien could throw is new. I hope there's a point to this abuse. If Damien's just fucking around for no reason, I'm in for a lot of pain.

"And?" I ask. I'm sick of people pussy-footing around me. I want them to talk straight to me.

"I know what you were planning to do." Damien informs me. My head snaps up and I stare at him in horror. I can feel the blood draining from my face. If Damien knows...

"Kenny has no idea." Damien continues, a cruel little grin spreading over his face. I let out the breath I had been holding. But I still eye him with caution. His little smile is nerve wracking.

"That's... good." I say.

Wrong answer, apparently.

Damien's smile melts into an impressive scowl. I actually take a step back. It may be my imagination, but I think the room temperature raises a couple of degrees.

"You motherfucking idiot pussy-licking shit-eating ass-faced _moron_!" Damien roars. The people huddled against the walls flinch. I do to.

"Uh..." I say intelligently.

"You deserve what's happened to you." Damien's scowl deepens even more. "But Kenny doesn't. I don't know what he sees in you."

I gape at him.

"Are you telling me to go _through_ with this?" My voice tips up into an indignant squeak at the end. Several people on the wall snicker quietly. They aren't worth my attention. Damien's grin is back, and his eyebrow is tipping in a way that makes me want to hide.

"Yes." Damien's grin slips into the range of the obscene. I back up a a few steps and he turns on his heel, pushing past Shay and walking purposefully to the door. At the last second he looks back.

"He's up at my place. I suggest you hurry." His grin is smaller now but no less self-satisfied. I scowl on instinct, though there isn't any heart in it. I'm too busy trying to rearrange my self around the idea that the Anti-Christ approves of my plan.

Shay guides me to the door and pushes me gently out. The hate in his gaze has softened, I notice. I don't know why. He knows what I'm about to do is despicable.

* * *

The elevator ride is ridiculously tense. I chew viciously on my fingernails, a nervous habit I must have picked up from Kyle. It doesn't help. It just makes my fingers hurt when I run out of nail.

I get out on Damien's floor. I'm experiencing the worst set of nerves I've ever felt. Oral reports have _nothing _on this. I feel like I'm about to throw up and pass out. It wouldn't surprise me at all if I did.

Kenny's playing the same game as before, though something about his posture makes me think he's bored out of his mind. At the sound of the doors closing behind me he looks over. His face lights up like a Jack 'o Lantern. I wince.

"Hey! Stan, I was wondering when you'd get here again." He smiles an open, happy smile. I pull an answering grin over my face and walk over. Kenny's shifted so that he's leaning over the back of the couch. I stop a few feet away.

He cocks his head to the side, curious.

_Now or never._

I walk the last few steps purposefully, planting myself in front of him and pausing for a long moment. Gearing up the motivation to test one of my core principals. I heave in a huge breath.

"I just need to figure something out." I tell him. I can't meet his eyes, I'm already regretting this, but I know that his confused, panicked gaze is raking my face. I can't think this through too much or I'll chicken out, and this obsession will eat me alive.

I grab his shoulders and lean forward in a rush that forces a little cry from him. Adrenaline is pounding through my system and I can't hear anything but its rush.

My lips touch his. It's a chaste brush of skin on hypersensitive skin, but it destroys my world.

That's what it feels like. Resetting the situation, changing the scent and feel and taste of the world, rewriting every protocol and program in my brain. Like a volcano erupts right under my feet. It tears away every barrier I've thrown up and sends the sensation straight through me, flames and sparks and fireworks and whatever other metaphor there is for something made of heat and beauty, something that destroys everything in its height of glory. This changes everything. This changes everything forever.

We disconnect the next instant, and it hurts like we were glued together and he yanked away. I want to reach up and drag him back.

And then I realize that I can never have what I could have had. There's no way for us to be normal, even by South Park standards. He will be here forever. And I will forever take his place dancing back and forth between Life and Death. With a merry little cracking sound my sanity crumbles that much more. There can't be that much more for me to lose, but I keep finding things that I've broken or lost or left behind.

We can never, ever watch a sunset. He'll never copy Kyle's homework answers again. I'll never see him five-finger a Snickers and give the clerk a charming smile on the way out. Cartman will never call him Po'boy to his face.

I've lost my childhood. He's lost his life. We are never going to be the carefree kids we once were.

The thought is a cold steel needle sliding between my ribs. I can't breathe.

When I open my eyes, I'm home.

Truly, this is Hell.

* * *

**a/n**

Ohoho! real Stenny at last, amirite? :D how many people were getting impatiant? show of hands? i know i was :P


	9. Hands Shaking

i am so, sincerely sorry for how long this has taken :( shoot me please

enjoy!

**a/n**

* * *

I'm sitting on the steps of the McCormick's at two in the morning.

The birds are singing and the snow is twinkling and a cigarette on the railing is still smoking. I wonder idly when Kenny had come out to smoke in peace.

And then realization smashes into me and I put my head between my knees, breathing shallowly to keep myself from crying. I miss him. I miss him so much it's almost like missing a limb. I keep reaching for him, trying to talk to him, and then... I remember _everything. _

I kind of have to laugh at what I do to myself. I must be a masochist. I go _looking _for the pain. Not that I have to look far anymore. It practically lines up to fall into my lap.

I just need a place that I could think clearly. Kenny's was always a place to be quiet. No one was ever around here except Kenny. Even his parents spent as much time away as they possibly could. Kenny was the odd exception, the one who didn't try to escape. At least, not so obviously. I knew where every buck he made went; there was a reason he wore his clothes to tatters. I knew how hard he struggled in school. He was clawing his way out of this place, bit by bit.

So whenever life got to be too stressful, I had always known that just past the tracks was a place where I could sit in a bedroom lined with Playboy centerfolds and Sports Illustrated: Swimsuit Edition posters, with someone who would never demand anything. Kenny's was a refuge for all of us. More than once I had walked into his room to find Kyle or Cartman already there, flipping through a magazine or trying to explain how moving bodies interacted with each other or some such physics shit.

Kenny understood. That was all I needed. All any of us needed.

It hurts just breathing in the lingering aroma of cigarettes and cheap beer. But the new conviction I've discovered is propping up all of my shaky ground. I can think now. I can stand a little pain.

I touch the peeling paint on the rail and stand up. My breath rushes out of me in a silvery cloud and I can watch it without guilt. It's a wonderful feeling, but one tempered by hopelessness. I have no idea how to do this. I don't know how to save him.

How to save Kenny.

So that's why I'm knocking on Pip's door at an hour no reasonable person should be awake.

I'm here for a lot of reasons. But for the most part I'm here because I am one hundred percent sure that Pip had, at one point, been dead. And since he's opening the door at this precise moment with droopy eyes but a definitely lack of zombie-pallor, I'm fairly sure he's alive.

"Stan?" He asks, rubbing his eyes sleepily. He's wearing a pair of pajamas that are purple and fluffy and effeminate, but I refrain from commenting. "What are you doing here?"

I shrug, shuffle my feet, open my mouth halfway, and realize I have nothing to say that will make any sense. The truth is straining to slip from between my teeth. I pull it back forcibly.

He sighs after a minute and gestures in the warm house.

"Come in."

I shuffle past him with my head down ashamedly, trying desperately to think of something to say. Or really, some way to segue into my true questions.

He gestures me into a chair in the living room and moves into the kitchen. I settle gingerly into the chair, which is so soft and deep I can't help but relax just a little bit. The room around me is spotless and still, a quiet, slow fragment of the world. I think to myself that maybe here would be a place that I could sit forever without moving or thinking or breathing.

It's more peaceful than a tomb.

Pip comes back with a pot of tea and two cups. I stare at him, aware my eyes are too wide, that my gaze is probably pleading. He sits on the other side of the coffee table and begins the apparently elaborate ritual of pouring the tea into the delicate porcelain cups. He pretends not to be aware of my crazed gaze tracking his every move, though it has to be disturbing.

When he's finally finished, he hands me a cup and takes his own. I notice in passing the liquid in my cup is sloshing around. Absentmindedly I rest my arms on my knees to steady them.

Silence reigns for several awkward minutes.

"Pip, what happened between you and Damien?" My sudden voice startles us both. I jump, the tea sloshing quietly in my cup. Pip's head snaps up and I finally realize what I've asked.

_That's_ my subtle attempt to edge into the subject? I might as well have used a mallet and chisel. I bite my lip viciously, a stand in for the beating I want to give myself. Wrapping my fingers tighter around the cup of tea, I wait for his answer. Pip sighs and sets his down in his saucer, fidgeting.

"Did Kenny put you up to this?" He asks. I flinch and shake my head harshly. I'm surprised he didn't know. Then again, Pip has always been the odd one out.

"Kenny's dead." I say roughly. Pip nods slowly and, miraculously, he seems to understand. The only one who did.

"I'm sorry." He murmurs. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I'm infinitely grateful for his quiet consolation. He doesn't pretend grief, doesn't affect any false sympathy. He offers me the chance to share instead of assuming I should.

"Not really. He died for me. That's all that's really important." I say. He nods like he understands, though I know he doesn't and never will. "But anyway. I need to know what happened."

Pip takes a deep breath and shrugs. I wonder if maybe I'm prying too deep, or asking the wrong questions, but there's no way to take my words back and swallow them back down.

"He um. He let me go home. Made me, actually." Picking his cup up gingerly, he takes a sip. When he's ascertained that I'm still about to wriggle off my seat with curiosity he elaborates. "I died and he sent me back. When I didn't want him to." Pip shrugs like it's no big deal but I can see the shadow in his downcast eyes, and the sadness in his smile.

I feel my chest ache sympathetically. Our situations really aren't so very different. I almost wonder what had gone on between Pip and Damien. But it isn't my place to pry into that. Pip left me alone about Kenny, after all.

But all this is secondary.

Hope, painful and sharp as a shard of glass, fills me. For an instant I'm merely membrane, protecting and constraining inside me a wild, horrible, _insatiable_ hunger. Hunger for peace. Hunger for respite. Hunger, mostly, tellingly, for Kenny. Its fills my like a million little flames, licking against my ribs and up my throat.

With a titanic effort I gather myself back into a recognizable human being

"About coming back. How did Damien do it?"

This is it.

This is what it all comes down to. This is what I am truly interested in. This is what I came for. I need to know if there is a way for Kenny to come back.

Pip doesn't seem to notice what he's doing to me.

"The analogy he gave me is he traded his being alive for my being dead. He switched our places. He can't come back to earth while I'm alive. I believe I may have delayed the Apocalypse." He smiles gingerly, as if he isn't sure he should be wearing the expression.

I sit back, his words breaking over me like a sunrise, an epiphany, a revelation of biblical proportions. I'm aware that my mouth is hanging open, my eyes wide and staring. I probably look like a psychotic fish.

I don't give a damn.

Kenny could be saved. He could be alive, he could be here with me, he could see the sun and Cartman wouldn't be hiding secret grief and Kyle wouldn't be half-frozen and Tweek would be alright and the world would start to turn again. I wouldn't be broken anymore. I would be whole and he could be saved and this is too much for me to hold in.

I can feel tears starting to gather in my eyes but I blink them back, and close my mouth. I have to be sure. I have to be sure this isn't a mirage, that it won't vanish as soon as I reach for it.

"Traded places? Are you sure?" I ask. My voice is husky and I'm having trouble breathing past the lump in my throat.

"I'm sure of it. That was the analogy he used, after all. Damien isn't the most imaginative with metaphors." Pip's expression is one of confusion politely deferred. I nod along with his words, mind racing ahead in giant leaps that I can barely follow.

"I wonder. Do you think he could do it again?" I ask, half to myself. Pip's expression turns to shock as he understands what I'm saying.

"Maybe." He says. He sounds staggered by the possibility. I hide my head in my arms, resting them on the table. The tears are coming.

"I'd need. Someone. To die for us." My breath is coming so short my sentences barely manage to make their way past my lips. "Maybe… one of the Goths."

My fingers are drumming on the table. I'm desperate for an outlet for this manic happiness. It's bubbling under my ribs and in my fingertips and on the tip of my tongue. I feel like a firework, trapped in the box, ready to explode, waiting for the flare of the match.

A small, cold hand covers mine. I look up quickly and catch Pip's indecisive face.

"You... won't have to ask them." He murmurs. "I volunteer." I gape at him.

"Why?" I ask, awestruck.

The look he blesses me with is condescending.

"Do you think I can't tell how much of a wreck you are without him?" His chiding tone makes me blush. "You need him. I know the signs." He places odd emphasis on the last sentence, and I look up at him with a questioning frown.

"How?"

In answer, with a sad little smile, Pip holds out a hand to me. I look at it, wondering what I'm supposed to see. Everything is whirling around like a carousel, and I'm not sure which end is up.

And then I see it.

I hold up my own hand, right next to his.

They shake. They tremble like leaves on a poplar tree, barely there shudders that nonetheless go bone-deep. But still. He knows. He knows everything. _Everything_.

I look up at him again and there are tears in my eyes.

* * *

**a/n**

last chapter is the last one :D show of hands who is sad to see it go?

NOT. ME.

jk, i love this story. but. i have cried tears of blood to finish this D:


	10. Valentine Hearts

THIS STORY. This story is done. D: final chapter. i think im suffering separation anxiety.

THANK YOU TO:

imesh, for being an awesome reviewer. check out their stories :D

be4kevin, for being an equally awesome reviewer (sorry about the lack of lemons dude)

xXxSoulKeeperxXx, for reviews and flamethrowers

danceswithsmurfs, for reviews and fanartz, that you should totally check out, and their stories, because awesome is awesome

carebearcreampie, for reviews and fanartz that you should also check out, along with their stories, which are bomb

enjoy the last chapter, guys :D

**a/n**

* * *

I embrace Pip on his porch, clinging tightly, before stepping away. I think my face may be blank, but this could only be because the play of emotions inside me is too vivid for expressions. Terror and euphoria, in perfect and perfectly conflicting balance.

"It'll probably be sudden." I warn.

"I shouldn't worry about me." Pip smiles wearily. I take one last look at him, catching all the little details that escaped me before I knew how to look. The deep shadows under his eyes, his oddly shaking hands, the ashen cast to his skin.

"Bye." I say, turning away. Looking at Pip was too much like looking in a mirror.

"Bye." I hear, and then the soft sound of a door closing. And I am alone in the dark, hoping for death, waiting to see Kenny.

He's coming home.

I decide to head for his house, though there's little point to the exercise. The streetlights, evenly spaced, are becoming redundant. The sun is edging up over the horizon, casting a long shadow ahead of me. I ignore them.

I'm going home.

* * *

The hobo that knifes me with a box cutter me seems puzzled by my joyful laughter as my guts spill across the street. I don't even care when he starts going through my pockets, relieving me of everything valuable. The word is going light and static, a TV screen with worse and worse reception.

By the time there is nothing but blank white to see I am twitching with impatience, tapping my fingers against my leg. My need to save Kenny is clashing with my fear of seeing him, which is fighting my terrible, new-found need to touch him, that conflicts with my lingering hate of the concept that I would ever want to. The war rages inside me, buoying me even as I ignore it. The only part of that fight that is important is Kenny.

When the waiting room slams into place, I hit the ground running. Shay snatches a spirit out of my way as I rocket out the door. I fix my whole attention on the building shining in the distance, one name singing over and over in my head.

Kenny.

* * *

I step out of the elevator with assurance, feeling the malevolent presence that is Damien. I ignore him and his omnipresent scowl. I'm looking for Kenny.

He's got his back to the window, watching me with the kind of fascinated terror one would give the tiger just before it pounces. His expression stops me in my tracks.

"Kenny?" I really didn't intend to say his name. It slipped out before I could stop it, before I could pull it back. I regret it instantly when he flinches.

"What do you want, Stan?" Damien asks. I look at him at last and am not surprised to find him lounging against the back of the couch. He seems to have appointed himself spokesperson. I'm not amused, not at all. I want to talk to Kenny, without this evil bastard present.

But it looks like that's not going to happen.

"I'm here." Kenny looks up involuntarily at my very deliberate voice, blinking in confusion. He knows this voice. It's my 'I win' voice. "To take Kenny home."

I barely hear Kenny's little gasp/sob over Damien's scoff of disbelief. My gaze slides involuntarily from Damien to Kenny. He has his back to me now, looking out the window. The way his arms are wrapped around himself makes me ache.

"You know I can't do that." Damien tries to sound solid, mocking. To someone who isn't as desperate as me, he might. But I am listening with all my might and I catch the tiniest tremor of uncertainty. The sharp, fierce glow of triumph bursts into being in my chest.

"_I_ heard something different." I know a catty smile is spreading across my face, but damn it, I can't get it off, no matter how I try. "_I_ heard you can do it."

Kenny whirled on Damien, a look of agonized betrayal crossing his face.

It's awful, the absolute misery in his expression. Damien, caught between my knowing gaze and Kenny's wide, painful eyes, can't move a muscle.

"I..." Damien looks, for once, at a loss for words. Kenny turns his pleading face my way.

"Damien?" In that one name, the first time I've heard his voice in so long, I can hear all of Kenny's trust in Damien shattering.

"I... I'm not – where did you... how?" He stutters. It's tragically comical, but I don't laugh.

"Damien. Can you." I ask in a voice that has no give in it. Kenny stands apart from us, looking at him with a quiet, distant, _broken _expression.

"Maybe." Damien explodes. "_If_ you find someone who's willing to die for you. _If_ you want this badly enough. _If_ nothing goes wrong. Then yes. You could both, _maybe_, survive. But those are some pretty damn big ifs."

I smile. He stares at me in surprise.

"I'm want this." I nod with finality. Damien's scowl lightens by a few shades, before darkening even more. He turns to Kenny's orange figure.

"Kenny? What about you?"

I'm shocked by his careful, gentle tone. It's so un-Damien it's scary. Kenny himself looks up in surprise.

"I... yes, I want to go home." He mutters, looking back down at his feet before I can decipher his expression.

"It's going to hurt again." Damien's voice, scarily, becomes even softer. Kenny shudders all over, visibly, but manages too look up again.

"I… know. But I want to go _home_. I miss-," he flicks a lightning glance at me that reminds me of all the hanging threads I've left, "Everyone. My family, and my friends. I even miss _Cartman_, goddamn it."

"That still doesn't mean you have someone willing to _die_ for you." Damien offers. He crooks an eyebrow when my smile slides off of my face like melting butter.

"I do, actually."

Kenny jerks with surprise. I reach out thoughtlessly to steady him, then pause and put my hand down. I have no right.

"Who?"

I wince. He isn't going to like my answer.

"...Pip."

Damien explodes before the word even has the chance to leave my mouth.

"No! No, no, no! That's not going to happen, never never NEVER!" Damien shrieks. I wince but hold my ground. I can understand his reluctance. But I can't back down.

"He wants to die so he can see _you_, asshole!" I shout over him. "He misses you so much he's willing to _die _for it!"

Damien had stopped shouting halfway through my second sentence. My last few words echo in the air before fading into silence. Kenny-

Kenny is sitting against the far wall, face wan and blank. His eyes gaze endlessly over the gray vistas outside Damien's window. I find every word I planned to say, every shred of confidence and hope, wither and fall away. Without Kenny, everything I 've done, everything I've tried to do, will be... pointless.

I can't take my eyes off of Kenny's little figure, even when I hear the doors slam as Damien storms out.

He heaves a shuddering breath that I only know isn't a sob because I can see that there are no tears on his cheeks. I want to go to him. I want to touch him. I want, so much it's physical pain, to reassure him. I just can't. I don't know if I can, if I should. The only thing I know is that I want to, want with a fire and intensity that I can't name.

_Why not?_

And it's almost like when I realized that I could save Kenny, like the world is rearranging itself around me, realigning. Or maybe its me realigning, twisting my thoughts yet again to fit the way things are.

Naming this fire, it's so easy. The answer... it was in the question.

Love.

* * *

I settle on the ground next to him, careful not to be too close, unwilling to be too far.

"How did you convince Pip to die?" Kenny asks, fingers tangling nervously. I jump a little. He hadn't made any sign he knew I was there.

I understand. He's wondering how much of a burden this would drop on him, how much guilt would be handed to him.

"I didn't." I shrug. More than anything, I want to reach out and hold Kenny, to sooth away those fears, but the boundaries between us are blurry and tenuous and I'm not sure how to put what I want into words. "He volunteered."

Kenny nods. His cheeks are still unhealthily pale, his breathing still worryingly harsh.

"I'm going home." He says at last. His hesitant tone makes it a question.

"Yeah." I answer, turning slightly to face him. He watches my movement with still, fathomless eyes.

"And you're coming with me?" He asks, his gaze finally finding mine, looking for the catch.

"Yes." I manage a true smile for the first time in days. It feels wonderful. Relief from everything that has torn at me for what had begun to seem like forever.

In answer the most beautiful smile I have ever seen breaks across Kenny's face. It's made somehow sweeter by the tears running down his cheeks.

"Thank you."

* * *

Damien comes in a while later. His face is eerily not hostile. For once his expression is civil.

"Fine." He spits the word with more resignation than venom. "Fine, I'll do it."

Kenny melts. The tension that pulled his body tight fades away, so fast I reach out to steady him. He hesitantly leans closer to me, trusting me with more of his slight, bony body. Damien watches this with hostility beginning to curdle back into his expression. I try not to pay any attention. Its starting to occur to me that hostility is his default state.

"Is Pip ready to die?" His voice crackles with more tension than his face or posture betrays.

"Yeah." My lungs won't seem to work, my chest won't move, and it's not just Kenny leaning on me, trusting me. It's hope.

Without any preamble Damien walks over and sticks his hands through each of our chests. I almost cry out and pull away, but Kenny stops me. I trust him enough to hold still, but it's a close thing.

Damien teeth are bared in an expression that could be a smile except that the emotions behind it are too alien for me to understand, much less to name. I focus on it and not the hand in my chest, touching my soul, playing with it like it's a toy.

With a pleased sound he pulls his hands back out of us. Something bright with darkness glimmers in his hands, spilling through his fingers and pooling in his palms. It's beautiful, terribly beautiful.

I look around, trying to distract myself from the constricting feeling in my throat and the nausea swimming in my stomach. And that's how I'm the first to see Pip arrive.

He doesn't fade into view, or appear in a shower of sparks or a whirl of smoke. It's like it becomes more and more likely Pip is in the room. The possibility of Pip probably sits on the couch, head likely in his hands. That's how I imagine him, how he'd be if he was here.

And I blink and he's here, exactly where I imagined him.

I gasp and cough, pinkish spit landing on my hand when I cover my mouth. I ignore it, pointing at Pip, who's looking up and around, astonished. Damien turns with the speed of hidden desperation. Kenny glances at Pip and looks down, wincing. A dull flush is spreading across his cheeks, and I can't tell if it's sickness or guilt, I can't see his eyes to know. The pain is spreading, I note.

Before the constricting ache in my throat and stomach sharpens into razor blades, I see Pip falling into Damien's arms. The picture makes me smile, though my skin tightens warningly. Damien looks back from leading Pip out the door and I think that maybe he's not scowling, maybe he's nodding goodbye. But I can't trust myself, the pain is starting to run under my skin like live wires.

Kenny finally lifts his head and I catch his eyes in mine. The purity of his hope makes me catch my breath and before I know what I'm doing I'm holding him close, crying out as skin breaks, sick at the feeling of torn skin and the first seeps of blood. The pain... the pain is indescribable, part our bodies tearing themselves apart but mostly somewhere deep inside us a ripping in our souls.

Time drags and races, coming and going in spurts marked only by gasps of breath and screams of agony.

We cling to each other, our bones breaking and impaling us. Our skin splits and our veins rupture but this only brings us closer together, the unraveling skeins of our muscle and vein tangling until we are one monstrous creature that screams with two mouths. His skin, my bone, they are impossible to tell apart when they are broken and torn.

As our bodies disintegrate I move the stringy fragments of skin and muscle and brittle bone that used to be my hand and brush Kenny's ragged cheek, wiping the skin away to see the glistening muscle underneath. Blood that isn't mine trickles down my frayed skin and dyes everything the color of Valentine hearts. His blue eyes are reddening and going cloudy and I'm sure that soon our sight will fail, but for now we can see each other. He is ugly and disgusting but I am too and I can see how beautiful he is stripped down to his bare tendons.

He reaches up with a hand that doesn't even look like one anymore and wraps his ravaged fingers around mine, melding the mangled flesh. Our blood, sticky and slick, flows in streams from the clasping digits. Clumsily, jerky in movement, we lean together until our harsh breathing mingles and our lips are seeping blood from our gentle contact. It's metallic and salty and wet and beautiful and I open my eyes in time for a last flash of blue, almost drowning in red-

And then I can't see anymore. There is just pain and Kenny's hand in mine.

* * *

**a/n**

because i am a glutton for punishment, i am considering doing a companion to it from Damien/Pips perspective. let me know what you think XD

**That's all, folks!**


End file.
